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Bigger is better at Ranor Inc.

By Michael Hartwell, mhartwell@sentinelandenterprise.com

Updated:
02/03/2013 06:30:40 AM EST

WESTMINSTER -- Big things are happening to a company that is known for producing big things, large metal-fabricated components 32 feet in length and 100 tons in weight that need to be custom built within two-thousandths of an inch.

Employees at Ranor, Inc. on Bella Drive in Westminster stress precision as the company's specialty. The company makes components for nuclear power plants, the Department of Defense, medical devices, solar equipment and large machines used by manufacturers.

The Westminster plant employs about 160 people and an expansion will break ground this spring. Once completed in less than a year the new space will add about 45 new employees to the company.

Westminster Town Planner Stephen Wallace identified Ranor, Inc. as the town's third largest employer and projected job increases from the expansion stand to overtake wealth management firm PRW Associates and make Ranor the second largest employer in town.

Most of the components made by Ranor are highly confidential and cannot be discussed in detail. Shop Manager Joseph Quinn said a 32 and a half foot long cylinder that is 14 feet in diameter and coiled with cooling pipes they constructed recently will be used by a client that manufactures solar panels. The holes drilled at the base will be used to bolt it in place when it is installed and must be align with the ones the client has. Quinn said the precision of the holes was double-checked with lasers.

"It's pretty tricky work," said Sales Manager Matthew Goodrow.

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He said the spring expansion will add a new workshop area where workers can fabricate larger machines and components up to 60 feet long, nearly twice what they can make now. The weight capacity in that section will be 75 tons, lower than the 100 ton limit the plant current has, because the extra lift capacity would be expensive and unnecessary. He said they have items in several industries in mind for the new section but declined to say what.

Ranor was started in Fitchburg in1956 and moved to Westminster in 1975. The company is a subsidiary of Center Valley, Pa.-based TechPrecision Corp., which took in $33.3 million in profits in the 2012 fiscal year. The company opened a subsidiary in China in February 2012 called Wuxi Critical Mechanical Components Co. Ltd.

In 2011 TechPrecision was awarded a $6.2 million tax-exempt bond through MassDevelopment that brought the Westminster location up to 145,000 square feet and added 30 jobs. The company also recently signed a $115 million five-year contract to produce proton-beam cancer treatment equipment in both the Westminster and China locations.

CEO James S Molinaro said some people outside of the company were concerned that opening the Chinese subsidiary signaled they would be downsizing in Westminster.

"In our case it created jobs domestically," said Molinaro. The Westminster location has increased its workforce by 20 percent since the Chinese location opened.

He said the Chinese location has made them an international company and allows them to sell products on the international market to countries like South Korea. Components made in China can be sold in Asian or sent to Westminster where domestic workers can work on them. They do not currently have any customers in China.

Because of the Department of Defense contracts, no one from the China location can ever visit the Westminster location.

"When we announced we have international manufacturing the companies we can attract are larger international companies," said Molinaro.

He stressed that what they do is not simply metal fabrication, but the production of precise large-scale objects that become parts of Navy submarines, nuclear power plants and machines that burn away tumors inside a person with a particle beam. In these components, every thousandth of an inch counts.

He said American manufacturing is still strong, it's just focused on different areas than it was in the past. He said the kind of manufacturing America has lost is imprecise and unskilled.

Molinaro said they are currently making assemblies for the six nuclear power plants being built in South Carolina and Georgia, the first domestic nuclear power plants built since the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania was completed in 1984.

"We're not the lowest cost. If you want someone to weld two pieces of metal together you've got the wrong guys," said Molinaro.

Brian Gilmore, a public affairs officer with the Associated Industries of Massachusetts trade group, said Massachusetts exports are crucial to the American economy.

"We export goods and import cash," said Gilmore. He said America is positioned to make high-value durable goods, or items that don't wear out in less than three years. Items he identified include finished products, computers, electric machinery, specialty paper and specialty chemicals. He said low-value goods, goods that wear out quickly and commodities are generally harder to make competitively.

"We're not competing on price, we're competing on technology," said Gilmore. "We need to continue to live by our wits and our brains in order to build another mousetrap.

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